This work lasted till the 15th of April, and the time was well employed.  The settlers, having become potters, made nothing but pottery.  When it suited Cyrus Harding to change them into smiths, they would become smiths.  But the next day being Sunday, and also Easter Sunday, all agreed to sanctify the day by rest.  These Americans were religious men, scrupulous observers of the precepts of the Bible, and their situation could not but develop sentiments of confidence towards the Author of all things.

On the evening of the 15th of April they returned to the Chimneys, carrying with them the pottery, the furnace being extinguished until they could put it to a new use.  Their return was marked by a fortunate incident; the engineer discovered a substance which replaced tinder.  It is known that a spongy, velvety flesh is procured from a certain mushroom of the genus polyporous.  Properly prepared, it is extremely inflammable, especially when it has been previously saturated with gunpowder, or boiled in a solution of nitrate or chlorate of potash.  But, till then, they had not found any of these polypores or even any of the morels which could replace them.  On this day, the engineer, seeing a plant belonging to the wormwood genus, the principal species of which are absinthe, balm-mint, tarragon, etc., gathered several tufts, and, presenting them to the sailor, said,—­

“Here, Pencroft, this will please you.”

Pencroft looked attentively at the plant, covered with long silky hair, the leaves being clothed with soft down.

“What’s that, captain?” asked Pencroft.  “Is it tobacco?”

“No,” replied Harding, “it is wormwood; Chinese wormwood to the learned, but to us it will be tinder.”

When the wormwood was properly dried it provided them with a very inflammable substance, especially afterwards when the engineer had impregnated it with nitrate of potash, of which the island possessed several beds, and which is in truth saltpeter.

The colonists had a good supper that evening.  Neb prepared some agouti soup, a smoked capybara ham, to which was added the boiled tubercules of the “caladium macrorhizum,” an herbaceous plant of the arum family.  They had an excellent taste, and were very nutritious, being something similar to the substance which is sold in England under the name of “Portland sago”; they were also a good substitute for bread, which the settlers in Lincoln Island did not yet possess.

When supper was finished, before sleeping, Harding and his companions went to take the air on the beach. it was eight o’clock in the evening; the night was magnificent.  The moon, which had been full five days before, had not yet risen, but the horizon was already silvered by those soft, pale shades which might be called the dawn of the moon.  At the southern zenith glittered the circumpolar constellations, and above all the Southern Cross, which some days before the engineer had greeted on the summit of Mount Franklin.